The crux of The Catcher in the Rye, if you’ll excuse the use of the word, is Holden Caulfield feeling ‘sad’ and ‘lonesome.’ He’s the great communicator with no one to communicate with, like so many of us.
People, mainly teachers, but even also his little sister Phoebe want him to ‘adapt.’ But how can you when you’re surrounded by people who don’t care about you or anything else and are developing into phony bastards at quite a rate.
It doesn’t help Holden being 16 and knowing that his one female friend, ‘old’ Jane – with whom he’d loved to play drafts – was in Ed Bankey’s car with that slob Stradlater, the latter getting up to who knows what.
And so the weekend goes on, getting lonesomer and lonesomer, and creepier and creepier. His one escape before he meets his parents and their reaction to his getting kicked out of Pencey Prep, is – of course – sneaking in to see Phoebe first.
She, aged about 11, gives him the third degree and asks him, point blank, what he wants to DO with his life. Holden’s answer has moved something like 97.5% of his 100,000,000 readers (the other 2.5% are just phony bastards) to something approaching tears.
DoubleSpeak 